Baby Friendly Designation

AdventHealth Hendersonville Continues Progress Toward Baby-Friendly® Designation

By Andrea Detwiler, BSN, RN, IBCLC, LCCE At The Baby Place and AdventHealth Medical Group Obstetrics and Gynecology offices, we continue our efforts to earn the

Baby-Friendly® designation. This designation is a part of a quality improvement program administered by Baby-Friendly USA, Inc. (BFUSA), which provides independent validation that a hospital has created an optimal environment for evidence-based infant feeding and mother-baby bonding. • Designation as a Baby-Friendly® Hospital will establish our facility as a leader in providing evidence-based maternity care practices to support optimal infant feeding. • Obtaining Baby-Friendly® designation is recommended by the CDC, American Congress of Obstetricians and

Gynecologists (ACOG), American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and the Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine (ABM). • On average, more than 90 percent of our patients initiate breastfeeding compared to the state average of 80.3 percent.

AdventHealth Hendersonville invited the BFUSA survey staff to complete our site visit last December. However, site visits were delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. BFUSA has recently developed a plan to move forward with two-part hybrid assessments: The first part will be completed virtually within the next few months, and the second part will be conducted on site once travel is safe again. Over the past year, we have focused on maintaining patient education and care practices consistent with Baby-Friendly® requirements. We also continued to train The Baby Place nursing team to provide evidence-based infant feeding care to our patients. New hires are fully trained in these practices within six months of beginning work in The Baby Place.

THIS ROBUST TRAINING CONSISTS OF THE FOLLOWING:

• Orientation to infant feeding policies. • More than 20 hours of education on breastfeeding and parent teaching for formula feeding (online curriculum). • Five-hour supervised clinical competency check-off completed with International

Board-Certified Lactation Consultant (IBCLC).

After the disappointment resulting from delays caused by COVID-19, we look forward to completing the last few hurdles to obtain the Baby-Friendly® designation.